Castor Gardens man arrested for alleged affiliation with terrorist group

Fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies last week ar­res­ted a Castor Gar­dens res­id­ent on charges he lied to im­mig­ra­tion of­fi­cials when he entered the United States by neg­lect­ing to men­tion he was af­fil­i­ated with an ex­trem­ist ter­ror­ist group.

Hayatul­lah Dawari, 62, de­scribed as a per­man­ent leg­al res­id­ent of the United States, was taken in­to cus­tody Aug. 6, ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the U.S. At­tor­ney’s Phil­adelphia of­fice.

WPVI broad­cast a re­port that Dawari lived on the 7200 block of Cal­vert Street.

Ac­cord­ing to the U.S. At­tor­ney, “Dawari is an Afgh­anistan cit­izen with al­leged ties to Hezb-e-Is­lami Gul­bud­din (“HIG”), an anti-west­ern in­sur­gent group act­ive in Afgh­anistan and Pakistan. Its stated mis­sion in­cludes for­cing the west out of Afgh­anistan, over­throw­ing the Afghan gov­ern­ment, and es­tab­lish­ing a fun­da­ment­al­ist Is­lam­ic state. It has long-es­tab­lished ties with al-Qaida, and it has served as an as­so­ci­ated force of al-Qaida in hos­til­it­ies against the United States and its co­ali­tion part­ners.”

The U.S. At­tor­ney said Dawari lied about his as­so­ci­ations on his Novem­ber 2013 ap­plic­a­tion for U.S. cit­izen­ship.

On that ap­plic­a­tion, fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies stated, “Dawari re­spon­ded ‘No’ to ques­tion 8a: ‘Have you ever been a mem­ber of or as­so­ci­ated with any or­gan­iz­a­tion, as­so­ci­ation, fund, found­a­tion, party, club, so­ci­ety, or sim­il­ar group in the United States or in any oth­er place?’”

Dawari, who is be­ing held in an un­dis­closed loc­a­tion, faces a max­im­um pos­sible sen­tence of 20 years in pris­on, a fine of up to $500,000, a $200 spe­cial as­sess­ment and three years of su­per­vised re­lease.

The case was in­vest­ig­ated by Fed­er­al Bur­eau of In­vest­ig­a­tion’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force that in­cluded U.S. Im­mig­ra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment Home­land Se­cur­ity In­vest­ig­a­tions and the Phil­adelphia Po­lice De­part­ment. It is be­ing pro­sec­uted by As­sist­ant United States At­tor­ney Jen­nifer Ar­bit­ti­er Wil­li­ams. ••